Segmentation of cervical cell nuclei in high-resolution microscopic images: A new algorithm and a web-based software framework

In order to automate cervical cancer screening tests, one of the most important and longstanding challenges is the segmentation of cell nuclei in the stained specimens. Though nuclei of isolated cells in high-quality acquisitions often are easy to segment, the problem lies in the segmentation of large numbers of nuclei with various characteristics under differing acquisition conditions in high-resolution scans of the complete microscope slides. We implemented a system that enables processing of full resolution images, and proposes a new algorithm for segmenting the nuclei under adequate control of the expert user. The system can work automatically or interactively guided, to allow for segmentation within the whole range of slide and image characteristics. It facilitates data storage and interaction of technical and medical experts, especially with its web-based architecture. The proposed algorithm localizes cell nuclei using a voting scheme and prior knowledge, before it determines the exact shape of the nuclei by means of an elastic segmentation algorithm. After noise removal with a mean-shift and a median filtering takes place, edges are extracted with a Canny edge detection algorithm. Motivated by the observation that cell nuclei are surrounded by cytoplasm and their shape is roughly elliptical, edges adjacent to the background are removed. A randomized Hough transform for ellipses finds candidate nuclei, which are then processed by a level set algorithm. The algorithm is tested and compared to other algorithms on a database containing 207 images acquired from two different microscope slides, with promising results.     

Induction of chromosome shattering by ultraviolet irradiation and caffeine: comparison of whole-cell and partial-cell irradiation

Synchronized and asynchronously growing cells of a V79 sub-line of the Chinese hamster were either whole-cell irradiated ( gamma, 254 nm) or laser-UV-microirradiated ( gamma, 257 nm). Post-incubation with caffeine (1-2 mM) often resulted in chromosome shattering, which was a rare event in the absence of this compound. In experiments with caffeine, the following results were obtained. Shattering of all the chromosomes of a cell (generalized chromosome shattering, GCS) was induced by whole-cell irradiation at the first post-irradiation mitosis when the UV fluence exceeded a "threshold" value in the sensitive phases of the cell cycle (G1 and S). GCS was also induced by laser-UV-microirradiation of a small part of the nucleus in G1 or S whereas microirradiation of cytoplasm beside the nucleus was not effective. An upper limit of the UV fluence in the non-irradiated nuclear part due to scattering of the microbeam was experimentally obtained. This UV fluence was significantly below the threshold fluence necessary to induce GCS in whole-cell irradiation experiments. In other cells, partial nuclear irradiation resulted in shattering of a few chromosomes only, while the majority remained intact (partial chromosome shattering, PCS). G1/early S was the most sensitive phase for induction of GCS by whole-cell and partial nuclear irradiation. The frequency of PCS was observed to increase when partial nuclear irradiation was performed either at lower incident doses or at later stages of S. We suggest that PCS and GCS indicate 2 levels of chromosome damage which can be produced by the synergistic action of UV irradiation and caffeine. PCS may be restricted to microirradiated chromatin whereas GCS involves both irradiated and unirradiated chromosomes in the microirradiated nucleus.     

Children's Reasoning About the Causal Significance of the Temporal Order of Events.

Four experiments examined children's ability to reason about the causal significance of the order in which 2 events occurred (the pressing of buttons on a mechanically operated box). In Study 1, 4-year-olds were unable to make the relevant inferences, whereas 5-year-olds were successful on one version of the task. In Study 2, 3-year-olds were successful on a simplified version of the task in which they were able to observe the events although not their consequences. Study 3 found that older children had difficulties with the original task even when provided with cues to attend to order information. However, 5-year-olds performed successfully in Study 4, in which the causally relevant event was made more salient. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Barrier Trees on Poset-Valued Landscapes

Fitness landscapes have proved to be a valuable concept in evolutionary biology, combinatorial optimization, and the physics of disordered systems. Usually, a fitness landscape is considered as a mapping from a configuration space equipped with some notion of adjacency, nearness, distance, or accessibility, into the real numbers. In the context of multi-objective optimization problems this concept can be extended to poset-valued landscapes. In a geometric analysis of such a structure, local Pareto points take on the role of local minima. We show that the notion of saddle points, barriers, and basins can be extended to the poset-valued case in a meaningful way and describe an algorithm that efficiently extracts these features from an exhaustive enumeration of a given generalized landscape.     

Adaptive polygonization of geometrically constrained surfaces

n -dimensional space, where n>3. This definition can be used for given surfaces that are implicit or parametric. This paper presents a robust, adaptive polygonization algorithm for evaluating and visualizing geometrically constrained surfaces. Let be the constrained surface, a 2-surface in n-space, and let π() be its projection into the subspace spanned by the first three coordinates. Our polygonization algorithm computes π(). The method works directly with the n-space representation, but performs all major computations in 3-space. Techniques for triangulation, polygon decimation, and local refinement are also presented.     

An enhanced timetabling procedure for the no-wait job shop problem: a complete local search approach

In this paper we consider the no-wait job shop problem with a makespan objective. This problem has usually been addressed by its decomposition into a sequencing and a timetabling problem. Here, first we focus on the timetabling problem and take advantage of the symmetry of the problem in order to suggest a new timetabling procedure. Secondly, we suggest embedding this timetabling into a recent metaheuristic named complete local search with memory.     

Tailoring Materials for Mottronics: Excess Oxygen Doping of a Prototypical Mott Insulator

The Mott transistor is a paradigm for a new class of electronic devices—often referred to by the term Mottronics—which are based on charge correlations between the electrons. Since correlation‐induced insulating phases of most oxide compounds are usually very robust, new methods have to be developed to push such materials right to the boundary to the metallic phase in order to enable the metal–insulator transition to be switched by electric gating. Here, it is demonstrated that thin films of the prototypical Mott insulator LaTiO₃ grown by pulsed laser deposition under oxygen atmosphere are readily tuned by excess oxygen doping across the line of the band‐filling controlled Mott transition in the electronic phase diagram. The detected insulator to metal transition is characterized by a strong change in resistivity of several orders of magnitude. The use of suitable substrates and capping layers to inhibit oxygen diffusion facilitates full control of the oxygen content and renders the films stable against exposure to ambient conditions. These achievements represent a significant advancement in control and tuning of the electronic properties of LaTiO_3+x thin films making it a promising channel material in future Mottronic devices.